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This is a dream I had very early in the morning on August 29, 1998: I was on some kind of business trip with a bunch of people. I don’t specifically remember who these people were, but I think it was a cross-section of people from my past and present. We were on our way home from this trip when we stopped at Denny’s in Wayne for a late night snack. After the meal it was decided for some obscure reason that we couldn’t make it home that night, despite the fact that Wayne is just a 15-minute drive from Phoenixville. We decided to get some hotel rooms for the evening so we’d be fresh for that (15 minute) long drive home the next morning. Next thing I know, we’re in the lobby of a hotel getting one room for the men and one room for the women. I stood there nervously trying to decide which one of my male companions I’d least mind sharing a bed with. At this point, I think I saw my dad and my sister-in-law Denise with her son Sean, but I don’t think they were part of my travel group. So I’m in this room, just off the hotel lobby, watching MTV. I was only idly watching it until I suddenly became aware that the video I was watching was for a song X-Files star David Duchovny had recorded with the Chipmunks. Yes, those Chipmunks--Alvin, Simon and Theodore. The title of the song was "Heroes Are Hard To Find." I don’t remember the verses to the song, though I think the lyrics were something like this:
The chorus was the unforgettable part of the song. It was simply the title, "Heroes are hard to find," sung in a very sprightly manner by Duchovny, Alvin, Simon and Theodore. When I say "very sprightly," I mean about three times more sprightly than I can imagine David Duchovny singing (or acting or doing anything for that matter) in real life. Throughout the video, Duchovny was running around in his Agent Mulder suit, acting out the verses. The one scene I remember had him playing baseball in his suit, going deep into right field for a long fly ball. It was a black and white video, but I think there was a color headshot of Duchovny singing the chorus. That’s it. The baby woke me up at that point. I spent the rest of the day, indeed maybe the rest of the week, singing, "Heroes Are Hard To Find." A post-script on this dream: a few weeks after I had the dream I discovered that the Chipmunks had released an album called The A Files: Alien Songs earlier that year. It was only today (10/5/00), while checking Amazon.com to confirm that The A Files existed, that I discovered that one of the tracks on the CD is the theme from The X Files.
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My friend Matt spontaneously wrote this poem
back on January 7, 1998. It’s a little
bit rough around the edges, being a spontaneously written poem, but it seems
appropriate to post here today since its subject, Cars bassist Ben Orr, died
earlier this week of pancreatic cancer. He was 53 years old. The Great Unsung Ben Orr Ric Ocasek didn't sing |
(Please feel free to email to others who may be interested or to print a hard copy for them but remember: The Dichotomy of the Dog is copyright2000 by Rich Wilhelm. If you plan on making a bazillion dollars from this piece of writing, please let me know so I can sue you or something.)